# Multi-Level Modeling of Large Language Model Inference Latency and Energy via Hybrid Analytical--Machine-Learning Predictors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06723 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06723/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Efficient MoE training and inference systems, one of 12 directions in Mixture-of-experts.
- Builds on 19 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- Mixture-of-experts / [Efficient MoE training and inference systems](https://mlsanity.com/moe/efficient-moe-training-and-inference-systems/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [Switch Transformers: Scaling to Trillion Parameter Models with Simple and Efficient Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03961/) (2021)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [GPTQ: Accurate Post-Training Quantization for Generative Pre-trained Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.17323/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13138/) (2022)
- [SparseGPT: Massive Language Models Can Be Accurately Pruned in One-Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00774/) (2023)
- [BloombergGPT: A Large Language Model for Finance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17564/) (2023)
- [LLM.int8(): 8-bit Matrix Multiplication for Transformers at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07339/) (2022)
- [LegalBench: A Collaboratively Built Benchmark for Measuring Legal Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11462/) (2023)
- [Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16863/) (2023)
- [Forecasting LLM Inference Performance via Hardware-Agnostic Analytical Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00904/) (2025)
- [Preserving Privacy and Utility in LLM-Based Product Recommendations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00951/) (2025)
- [HDLFORGE: A Two-Stage Multi-Agent Framework for Efficient Verilog Code Generation with Adaptive Model Escalation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04646/) (2026)
- [This Is Taking Too Long -- Investigating Time as a Proxy for Energy Consumption of LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15699/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid scaling of Large Language Models (LLMs) has significantly increased computational cost, energy consumption, and inference latency, making accurate estimation essential for sustainable artificial intelligence deployment and hardware-aware design. In this work, we introduce Hybrid Modeling for Energy and Latency of LLMs (HYMELL), a hybrid three-level framework for estimating LLM inference latency and energy by combining analytical modeling with machine learning (ML). HYMELL models LLM execution through a three-level hierarchy: analytical estimation of primitive operations, ML prediction of higher-level components, and an end-to-end model that captures system-level overheads across both prefill and decode phases. The framework supports diverse architectures, including dense and mixture-of-experts (MoE) feed-forward networks (FFNs), as well as multi-head attention (MHA) and grouped-query attention (GQA) mechanisms. Evaluated on an NVIDIA H100 graphics processing unit (GPU), HYMELL achieves high predictive accuracy; notably, for LLaMA 3 8B, it attains less than 5% error for both prefill and decode phases. By predicting execution costs directly from architectural parameters, it enables fast, hardware-free design space exploration and energy-efficient optimization.
